On Mirrors by Ben Tufnell

As prehensile as the Frankel chair?

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Are we reflected by our own wordself or sigil?

About an hour ago, before reading this work, I gratuitously quoted, with an instinct I could not then fully comprehend, these words during my latest episodic review of a Bowen fiction (here): ‘…a visitor’s dog sat up to beg politely; he, frowning carefully, dropped tea-cake into its mouth.’
Now I see this reflected in a new light when obliquely reflected in this story, wherein a character called Smith (whom the main narrative protagonist, with a flower in his lapel, regularly meets for dinner) talks about animals having the test of recognising themselves in mirrors …and things begin to ensue ‘backwards’ as if in search of lost time…
The first impression of this work, as a plainly accomplished and effective horror tale or ghost story about an ornate haunted mirror as bought by the main protagonist, and the reflection being slightly out of kilter with his own movements, and this develops with almost alchemical sense of doppelgängers or what I have long called Proustian selves. Verging from Borri to Borges, Blake’s fearful symmetry, and 17th century spells or cabalisms, and much else. But who is Smith? That ‘sense of self’ (explicitly mentioned), a sense of self that, I wonder, one needs to buttonhole or emulate?
I seem to be haunted by a sense of self beyond the words in this story.
Not to speak of a sense of ‘fatherhood and copulation’ — GFB: God F**ks Bodies? Leaving what behind?

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Full context of this Nightjar Press publication: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2021/12/16/a-nightjar-sextet/