"One of the last times I saw Joe Campbell, in the late spring of 1987, was in the Redwood Room of the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. That night, as we had so often before in what we called our version of the philosopher's 'long conversation' the one between minds long gone, still here, and yet to come we spoke with great joy about two of our favorite topics: Joyce and Paris, and the bittersweet relationship between the artist and the city.
"Over a final glass of Glenlivet I confided to him a favorite story of my own. A few years before I was drifting across the country on a motorcycle trip when, like a wayward traveler in an Arabian Nights tale tripping over a golden nugget hidden under a tree root in the dark forest, I discovered an uncanny scene that struck me at being being the heart of the hero's journey.
"It was that of a crumbling tombstone in Boothill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona, the gravemarker of an old gunslinger. The epitaph read: 'Be what you is, cuz if you be what you ain't, then you ain't what you is.'
"I can hear Joe's hearty bodhisattva laugh now and the clink of our glasses over the soothing sounds of the late-night jazz piano in the old redwood-paneled bar.
" 'That's it!' he cried out with that eternal look of wonder in his eyes. 'That's what it's all about: the mystery of the journey. That's just marvelous!
" 'Now, how did that go again? "Be what you is . . ." ' "