I was inspired by a line in the Chinese – Canadian Fed Wah’s memoir, Diamond Grill where he talks about his sense of not being one thing or the other: “this flag of the many in the one yet ‘less than one and double‘.” It spoke to my situation as an Irish-New Zealander or an Ulster-Scot. Wah comments that the hyphen is contaminated at both ends.

The layers of wood from different countries of origin combine to make the hyphen-shaped block and some of the layers have some trouble staying together.