You can skip on first reading to get an overview of where the author wants to take you, but don't expect it will clear up later on its own. Read and re-read. Fill in all the little gaps, especially when a sentence begins with "Clearly" or "As we can easily see".
"As we can easily see" == doesn't seem implausible after you read the paper countless times, re-work all the derivations from scratch at least 7 times, read the cited docs, get out your old analysis texts to look up some theorem you'd forgotten existed, and sacrifice a chicken.
I must say, there's nothing like reading a math paper to remind me that there's no shortage of people in the world that are way smarter than me.
