Sutherland refused all treatment. He declined medical assistance, rejected offers of surgical intervention, visual prosthetics, and sensory simulation. He withdrew into the darkness of his laboratory for 30 days—alone, silent, almost absent. This retreat was not an escape, but a trial. He tested the limits of his body, his mind, and his visual mourning. Some witnesses describe it as a fast from light, a voluntary isolation akin to initiation rites.
The walls of his laboratory became the contours of an inner cave. He recorded everything in a notebook, dictating in a low voice: disjointed thoughts, fragments of sentences, half-erased formulas. Gradually, he came to understand that sight is not the only path to knowledge. What the image had concealed, the shadow began to reveal. In absence, another form of clarity emerged.