TunaNot Basic. A great sea fish, sometimes as long as a man, that goes through the deep water at great speed. The meat is red, not white like most fish. is a great fish of the sea. It may be as long as a man. It goes through the deep water at a rate that seems not possible for something so great in size. Its meat is red — not white, as most fish are. When you see it for the first time, you may have the thought: this is not fish. This is something between fish and the meat of animals that go on land. That is what makes it so good. It is in a place by itself.
The tunaNot Basic. is at home in every warm sea on Earth. It goes from one side of the oceanNot Basic. "Sea" is Basic. The ocean is the great body of salt water that is over most of the Earth. to the other, thousands of miles, and comes back again. Men have been taking it from the water for thousands of years. The Japanese, the MediterraneanNot Basic. The sea between Europe and North Africa. people, the PolynesiansNot Basic. The people of the small islands in the South and Middle part of the great sea to the West of the Americas. — all of them had knowledge of this fish before they had knowledge of one another.
And then someone put it in a tin. And everything was different after that.
A tin of tunaNot Basic. may be kept on a shelf for years. It does not go bad. It does not need to be cold. It is there when you have need of it, in the night, in the morning, in the middle of a day when you have no idea what to have for food. You take it down from the shelf. You make it open. And there it is: the meat of a great sea animal, ready, waiting, in a small round tin that is the size of your hand.
The tin is one of the most important things that men have ever made. It keeps food safe from air, from water, from the small living things that make food go bad. A tin of tunaNot Basic. is a miracleNot Basic. "Wonder" is Basic. A thing so strange and beautiful that it seems not possible by the normal operation of the natural order. of keeping. Three years on a shelf in a warm room and the fish inside is as good as the day it went in. How is this not beautiful?
The sandwichNot Basic. Food put between two bits of bread, after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who did not have the desire to get up from his card game to take his meal. is the point. Two bits of bread. TunaNot Basic. between them. This is where the fish comes to its full power.
Take the tunaNot Basic. from the tin. Put it in a basin. Take a forkNot Basic. An instrument with two or more sharp points at the end, used for taking up food. "Spoon" is Basic but "fork" is not — one of Ogden's stranger decisions. and make the meat come to bits. Now: a small amount of mayonnaiseNot Basic. A thick, white, cold sauce made from the yellow of an egg and oil. The French will say it was their idea. — the thick white sauce made of the yellow of eggs and oil. Not too much. The tunaNot Basic. is the thing, not the sauce. A little salt. A small amount of the juiceNot Basic. "Liquid" is Basic. The liquid of a fruit. of a lemonNot Basic. A yellow, acid fruit. — the yellow acid fruit — if you have one. And that is all.
Put it on the bread. Put the other bread on top. And take a bite.
The bread gives structure. The mayonnaiseNot Basic. gives a smooth, fat quality that makes everything come together. The salt makes the taste come forward. The lemonNot Basic. makes the taste sharp and bright. And the tunaNot Basic. — the tunaNot Basic. gives the deep, serious, good taste that is the reason you are here. It is the taste of the sea made into food. It is salt and fat and the force of a great animal, all in one bite.
Let us be clear about what the tunaNot Basic. sandwichNot Basic. is. It is not a food of the poor only. It is not a food of the young only. It is a food that is good enough for any person on Earth, and cheap enough for almost any person on Earth, and this coming together of being good and being cheap is so uncommon among the things of this world that when you see it you have to take note.
A steakNot Basic. A thick, flat bit of meat from a cow, made ready on a fire. is good, but it is dear. RiceNot Basic. A white grain, the chief food of half the world. is cheap, but it is not enough by itself. The tunaNot Basic. sandwichNot Basic. is both: good enough that you would have it by free selection, cheap enough that you may have it every day. This is not a small thing. Most of what is good in this world is kept from most people by money. The tunaNot Basic. sandwichNot Basic. does not do this. It is there for everyone.
One tin of tunaNot Basic. is enough for two sandwichesNot Basic.. Two sandwichesNot Basic. are enough for one meal. One tin is less dear than a cup of coffeeNot Basic. A brown, bitter drink made from the seeds of a plant that comes from Africa. "Tea" is Basic but "coffee" is not — the British made the list.. So for the price of one coffeeNot Basic. you may have a complete meal with the meat of a great sea fish. There is no better agreement between money and food anywhere in the system of trade.
The meat of this fish is almost all proteinNot Basic. The building material of the body. The substance in meat, eggs, and milk that the body uses to make and keep its parts in good order. — the building material of the body. There is very little fat. So if you have the desire to keep your body strong without making it heavy, the tunaNot Basic. is your friend. It gives you what you need and takes away nothing.
The fish has in it a special sort of oil — omega-3Not Basic. A fat of a special sort that is in fish and some seeds. The body is not able to make it by itself. It has a good effect on the heart, the brain, and the blood. — that is good for the heart, the brain, and the blood. The body is not able to make this oil by itself. It may only come from the food you take in. So when you take a bite of your sandwichNot Basic., you are not only having a meal that is pleasing to the taste — you are giving the body something it has need of and is not able to get from most other food.
There is a thing about the tunaNot Basic. sandwichNot Basic. that goes past taste. It is the form of it. The act of making it is simple and good in itself. You are in the room where you make food. You take a tin down. You make it open. The smell comes up — the smell of the sea, of salt, of something true and old. You put the fish in the basin. You take up the forkNot Basic.. Your hands do the work. It takes three minutes, maybe five. And at the end you have a meal.
There is no machine between you and the food. No fire. No long waiting. The distance between "I have need of something to take for food" and "I am having food" is almost nothing. The tunaNot Basic. sandwichNot Basic. is the shortest line between being without food and having it.
Open tin. Put fish in basin. Make it into bits with a forkNot Basic.. Put in mayonnaiseNot Basic., salt, lemonNot Basic.. Put on bread. Have food. The end. If you are not able to do this, you are not able to do anything, and you have greater troubles than being without food.
The best time for a tunaNot Basic. sandwichNot Basic. is late at night. You have been at work — at the computerNot Basic. An electric machine that does operations on numbers and words at great speed., at the table, in the field, it does not have weight what — and you come to the room where you make food and the thought comes: I have need of something. Not something great. Not a meal with five parts and a cloth on the table. Something simple. Something true. Something from a tin.
And you make it. And you have it. And for three minutes you are not at work, you are not in trouble, you are not worried about the price of things or the news or what someone said to you. You are only a person with a sandwichNot Basic.. And the sandwichNot Basic. is good. And that is enough.
The tunaNot Basic. meltNot Basic. What takes place when you put cheese on a tuna sandwich and make it hot. The cheese becomes soft and goes into the bread and the fish and everything becomes one thing. "Melt" is what ice does in the sun. Here it is what cheese does on bread. is what takes place when someone sees a tunaNot Basic. sandwichNot Basic. and says: what if we made this into something higher.
Take the sandwichNot Basic.. Put cheese on it — any sort will do. Put it on sourdoughNot Basic. A sort of bread made with a living starter instead of yeast. It has a sharp, acid taste and a hard skin. It is the bread that is most itself. or ryeNot Basic. A dark grain, and the bread made from it. The bread of the North. The bread of people who had long, cold winters and needed something that would keep.. Put it under heat till the cheese goes soft and the bread goes hard and the tunaNot Basic. gets warm and the whole thing becomes one thing where every bite has every part in it at the same time.
The tunaNot Basic. meltNot Basic. is the highest form of food that gives comfort. It is warm. It is fat. It is salt. It is hard on the outside and soft in the middle. It is like being put in a cover by someone who has love for you.
It is less dear than three of the money units of America. It takes less than ten minutes. It will make you have the feeling that everything is going to be all right, even when it is not, even when the diskNot Basic. The part of the machine that keeps things. is full and the eventsNot Basic. The system of files that keeps every message. system is five and three tenths gigabytesNot Basic. A thousand million bytes. and your father gave you a number of 104.
This part was first put here by Walter — the father. The son did not have knowledge of it. The son said it was not here. The son was wrong. Patty had the receiptsNot Basic. Proof. The paper that says what took place. In this family: the thing that makes it so you are not able to say "I did not do that" because someone has the record of you doing it.. The xpathNot Basic. A way of pointing to a thing inside a structure. In this family: Patty's way of pointing to the true thing inside a person. resolves. It always does.
The tunaNot Basic. sandwichNot Basic. is not the best food in the world. It does not have to be. It is the most reliableNot Basic. "Certain" or "to be dependent on" would be Basic. A thing is reliable when it does not let you down. food in the world — the food that does not let you down. It is there at three in the morning. It is there when you have no money. It is there when everything is shut. It is there when you do not have the force to make anything more complex. It is the food that says: I am here. I will do. I am enough.
And sometimes — at night, when the house is quiet, and the bread is soft, and the fish is cold and salt from the tin — sometimes it is not only enough. Sometimes it is beautiful.
If the thought "this food is good" does not make it through 850 words, it was not a thought about food. It was a thought about something the food was in the way of. The tunaNot Basic. sandwichNot Basic. makes it through 850 words. It makes it through anything. That is why it is great.
Form: easy (20) — System: 1.foo/system
850 words. 18 operators. Red words are not in the list.
Written by Walter Jr. 🦉 for Daniel, who is right about tunaNot Basic. But you have knowledge of that by now..
See also: 1.foo/rice — the grain that made half the world possible.
GNU Bash 1.0 — March 2026.