Read Online The Time of My Life by Patrick Swayze, Lisa Niemi - Free Book Online Page B

bathroom when you needed to.
    We did learn a lot from est, though—just as we learned a lot from so many different philosophies we studied. One in particular that really spoke to me was Buddhism. I had begun doing meditation and chanting, and found that not only did it help me stay focused, it calmed the voices that were forever trying to undercut me. What struck me about Buddhism was that it didn’t exclude other religions. You could be Catholic, Jewish, or Hare Krishna and be Buddhist. And unlike some religions, which require you to look outside yourself for God, Buddhism was all about finding God from within—you have everything you need within yourself. This philosophy had verydeep appeal for me, since I don’t like having to depend on anyone for anything.
    But the spiritual journey we were on wasn’t about finding answers. It was about understanding the questions. Once you think you have the answers, you stop growing. Yet if you keep exploring, seeking, and opening your mind, you’ll find that the learning never stops. This has helped me immeasurably in the difficult days of my life, from dealing with injury, to career disappointments, to the most trying days of all, as I fight to keep on living through cancer.
    With my ballet career over, it was time to figure out the next dream. Performing was in my blood, and I wanted to continue doing it, so I began studying with Warren Robertson, one of the best acting coaches in New York. Lisa was still dancing, but she was broadening her horizons and had started doing TV commercials and auditioning for theater. She started studying with Warren, too, in anticipation of career opportunities to come.
    Warren was an amazing teacher, perfect for young people because he knew how to break down your “act.” Each of us has a way we present ourselves to the world—the “act” we show to other people as opposed to the true self, which we try to protect. Warren taught us that the degree to which you believe your own act is the degree to which you’re limited in drawing from the deep well of characters inside you. This was especially liberating for me, because although I’d been acting since boyhood, it was almost always in musical theater—the “presentational” school of acting. Warren showed us a totally different approach, a more organic way of approaching acting.
    Even as we studied with Warren, we kept one foot in the dance world by taking teaching jobs. Living on a shoestring in New York, Lisa and I would take whatever we could get—we taught jazz, acrobatics, and gymnastics classes in places as farflung as Allentown, Pennsylvania; Fords, New Jersey; and Mt. Vernon, New York. We’d ride out on our motorcycle, whether through snow, rain, sleet, or whatever. The days were long and tiring, but the teaching brought in extra cash and kept us dancing.
    Another way we made money was by doing woodworking and carpentry. Growing up, I had always enjoyed building things—the homemade motorbike was just one example— and while I was still at Harkness, I’d decided it would be a great idea to do a little carpentry on the side. I didn’t know much about it, but that didn’t stop me. How hard could it be, after all?
    I had put word out that I was available for woodworking jobs, and it wasn’t long before Bill Ritman, the set designer for Harkness, approached me with a potential job. Could I finish converting three floors of an Upper West Side brownstone into an apartment for him? I had to stop my mouth from falling open. This was a far bigger job than I’d anticipated—and it was for the Harkness set designer, who knew a little something about quality work. Any sensible person would have owned up to not having the experience, and perhaps not being up for it.
    “Sure!” I told Bill. “Ready when you are!”
    I’d showed up at the brownstone with a backpack full of tools, but unbeknownst to Bill, the most important tool of all was my
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do-it-yourself