rough translation of the first paragraph of Proust's Recherche (more to come in the future):

For a long time, I have gone to bed early. Sometimes, when I extinguish my candle, my eyes close before I can say: "i'm asleep." And, a half hour later, the thought that it was time to find myself asleep awakened me; I tried to put down the book that I thought to still have in my hands and to blow out my light; in sleep, I hadn't stopped ruminating on those I came to read of, but those reflections had taken on a peculiar little path; it seemed to me that I, myself, was the subject of whom the book spoke: a church, a quartet, the rivalry of Francois I and Charles the 5th. That belief survived for a few moments after my alarm; it didn't upset my reason but it weighed like scales on my eyes and prevented them from taking account that the candlestick no longer was lit. Then it commenced becoming unrecognizable to me, like the thoughts of a past life after one is reincarnated; the subject of the book detached itself from me, I was free to apply myself to it or not; immediately I recovered my sight and was surprised to find darkness around me, sweet and relaxing for my eyes, but maybe more still for my spirit, that it came to be like a thing without cause, incomprehensible, a thing truly dark. I asked myself what time it could be; I heard the whistling of trains that, more or less far, like the song of a bird in a forest, from afar described to me the deserted countryside through which the traveler hurries toward the next station; and the little path that he follows along is etched into his memory by the excitement of new places, of unusual activities, of recent conversations and of goodbyes under strange lamps that echo still in the silence of the night, of the sweetness of the imminent return.