The Dash

Nietzsche once wrote:

In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that, you need long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken, big and tall.

Nietzsche was, of course, a five-eight giant, but this aphorism sets the scene for us: already we can imagine this Socrates who practices music in a bar, seeking out the long and sexy legs that can traverse such mountains, someone big and tall, a “blonde animal”; we can imagine him chatting up (or more likely, at home imagining chatting up) some vast Amazon brazenly devoid of pessimism or the encumbrances of slave morality or panties.

Likewise the dash: the jump-cut, the javelin, the sudden unexpected ejaculation of prose -is under utilized and appreciated. Is the history of the erotic literature imaginable without:

While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight—my brain reeled

or

In an instant I was inside of her -then I felt myself bump up against something hard and plastic.

or even

Take it off. Take it all off. -Oh No!