I'm your typical art-college student. I breathe through the fumes of cigarette smoke. Religiously pray to my espresso machine at every sun-up. And devour books in the rush of my daily commute. My life is a concrete jungle, and I'm a tourist. I'm inspired by the uniqueness of the world around me. I'm stubborn in my pursuits and I never stop questioning. Restlessness and passion fuels my life. Vladimir Zaytsev is my name, Chicago is my home away from home. Photography is my major. And I don't expect my life to be easy.
And then one student said that happiness is what happens when you go to bed on the hottest night of the summer, a night so hot you can’t even wear a tee-shirt and you sleep on top of the sheets instead of under them, although try to sleep is probably more accurate. And then at some point late, late, late at night, say just a bit before dawn, the heat finally breaks and the night turns into cool and when you briefly wake up, you notice that you’re almost chilly, and in your groggy, half-consciousness, you reach over and pull the sheet around you and just that flimsy sheet makes it warm enough and you drift back off into a deep sleep. And it’s that reaching, that gesture, that reflex we have to pull what’s warm - whether it’s something or someone - toward us, that feeling we get when we do that, that feeling of being sad in the world and ready for sleep, that’s happiness.
