nick piombino on navigating the strange

Today Nick Piombino offered an excerpt from his book The Boundary of Blur that I found incredibly beautiful and moving. It's a huge, complex thought that I don't think could have been more succinctly stated. Here's part of it:

There were moments of strangeness too before
the smile of recognition. This happened so many times it
became like breathing. But the first few times seemed
infinitely long. Once your mind has segmented the leap
into human strides the abyss has measure if still as
daunting. Even chaos may get less forbidding as its
features (ever changing) start announcing themselves
as provoking a recognizable feeling or constellation of
reactions.