About six months ago around my sixty-third birthday, I dreamed I was at a strange outdoor carnival—equal parts vintage bodybuilding expo and mythological sideshow. Imagine Venice Beach circa 1977 collided with a protein-scented Renaissance fair. Every booth was oiled, bronzed, and flexing. The air reeked of grilled meat and competitive ego.
I found myself seated at a worn wooden picnic table across from none other than Frank Zane. Yes, the Frank Zane. He appeared cryogenically preserved—shimmering with coconut oil and the kind of disciplined grace that once made garage-dwelling teenagers across America pick up dumbbells in religious awe.
Mid-bite into a hot dog (which I suspect he chewed with the calculated intensity of a surgeon), Zane leaned in and said, “I’m selling everything. Moving into a luxurious underwater mansion.” He said this with the calm gravity of a monk planning his final pilgrimage.
No one questioned him. The idea of Frank Zane embracing Poseidon’s lifestyle apparently struck everyone but me as reasonable.
I didn’t challenge him—this was a man who once ruled the pantheon of iron. But something felt off. Watching him trade barbells for barnacles stirred something protective in me. So I nodded and declared, with biblical authority, that he was one of the top three bodybuilders of all time.
The crowd reacted like I had spoken in tongues. Gasps. Reverent murmurs. Zane glowed under the praise like a bronzed deity sunbathing in worship.
Then, I leaned in.
“Frank,” I said. “Maybe rethink the whole Poseidon thing.”
“Why?”
“Well,” I said, summoning the full absurdity of the dreamscape, “I’ve recently discovered—at 63—that I can throw a 100-mile-an-hour fastball.”
Without delay, a 70-year-old French professor appeared, squatting behind a makeshift mound in catcher’s stance. I wound up and released pitch after blistering pitch, Zeus-style, slicing the air like divine vengeance.
Zane’s eyes sparkled. His jaw dropped.
“I can’t miss this,” he said. “Forget Atlantis. I’ll stay. I need to see you pitch.”
Applause erupted. I had saved Frank Zane from a life of underwater exile. I had become the miracle.
If the great psychologist Carl Jung were analyzing my dream, he might say this:
“Frank Zane is not merely an icon of bodybuilding in this dream. He is the archetype of disciplined masculinity—the part of your psyche shaped by idol worship and heroic longing. His desire to retreat underwater speaks to the lure of fantasy, nostalgia, and detachment. But your fastball—that impossible, mythic feat at 63—is the dream’s axis of transformation. You are no longer the boy in awe of muscle-bound gods. You are the figure of agency, of miraculous reinvention. And the professor? He is the intellect, finally catching what the body has thrown.”
“This dream isn’t a joke. It’s your soul’s comic book. Read it again. And then throw another pitch.”
Cinemorphosis 
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