1942.

This Vogue Magazine was launched in July of 1942, in the United States. It was also the year Stephen Hawking was born, the physicist that defied the sky, and tried to theorize everything. Literally. Also, Paul McCartney was born. The person who fought for peace and for the sun in people’s mind. Like July, a month of sun, light, brightness, happiness, and full of life. It’s that time of the year when you put the sunglasses on, and you see things in a smooth, natural and poetic way.

1942 was also the year that Camus published “The Stranger”. It’s a story about a man in the summer who kills an Arab man because of the sun. That’s what he says. Mersault, the hero, doesn’t react, doesn’t feel, doesn’t believe. Life, to him, just passes by. Minimal emotion or not all. Even in the prison. Hard and dry vision of consequences and acceptance. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t care. I repeat: It’s a story about a man in the summer who kills an Arabic because of the sun. Why? I don’t have an answer. No one in their perfect morality would do that. The only thing I know is that he sees life as an outsider: a natural consequence of being born, and you suffer for that. You just exist and that’s it.

Like we, perfect strangers to life, we should also be able to see things in a different way, as outsiders. But try to not to fear what you might read, see, feel, observe, contemplate. It can be chaotic, it defies you, it keeps you away from the fantasy, because it’s the reality and we can’t deny it. Our sense of belonging to this world is meaningless. We're all going to die someday. But, like Stephen Hawking who tried to have brief answers to big questions, Paul McCartney who reached for the sun, and a Vogue cover in the summer: we should be able to step away from this thought and put the sunglasses on when the sun hurts or you might kill something inside of you. Or someone.