Break-In / Breakdown Part 2: Whence Serenity, or, Before/After: Door
"If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace." ~ Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Is security necessary for serenity?
Does the Golden Age of empathy and equality, courage and compassion, liberty and love, need us to dream it into existence?
Are bad things not about karma anymore, as that is being cleared, but about having the awareness and courage to say NO to what we will not tolerate, so we can create what we want?
It's all connected!
Two days ago I was upstairs in the home office at the adorable house I'm renting for peace and quiet this summer while my regular place is having awful roof issues -- I call this house my "summer serenity cottage" -- when I heard someone enter the house.
I had the physical reactions one has in such moments: your blood runs cold, your heart beats fast, your whole body prickles.
I was on a video call with a dear tutoring client. Taking my open laptop with me, I went carefully downstairs, and saw that the landlord had somehow come in unannounced. He was standing in the kitchen shouting my name, shouting somewhat incoherent insults at me, and waving his arms. Then he began crying, from cloudy eyes, and shaking with sobs, while still shouting. Was he having an attack of dementia?
I took deep breaths to calm myself and the energy in the room a bit. I tried to have a rational conversation with him and find out why he had come into the house, but I wasn't receiving answers that made sense. I told him that he was not allowed to come in and surprise me, and that he had to leave now. I told him again, and, sobbing and shouting, he left.
The incident was alarming, and it was a culmination of escalating inappropriate behavior by the landlord. You can read the details, along with the email I sent to the landlord's son who is around my age, plus the son's non-helpful reply, in the previous post.
What to do next?
What's law got to do with it
I can't control the son's lack of action or the father's lack of care. I can insist that I, and my space, are respected.
I have tried kindness here, and I have compassion for all beings, and I also have kindness and compassion for myself. The problems with the landlord's peeping-tom behavior, shouting and mean behavior, coming to the door uninvited and wanting to come inside, and oversharing of personal information have only gotten worse, even though I told him to stop.
If he comes to the door or presses his face to the window again as he had been doing, if he shouts or harasses me again as he had been doing, or if -- angels and dragons forbid -- he manages to get into the house again, I can:
- call his son and
- call the police,
and whoever gets here sooner can have him.
Not only is the landlord breaking any semblance of good manners or customer service (I am a paying customer!), he is technically breaking the law.
Yes, I do not own the house but am renting it for the summer -- unfurnished; the furniture and decor are mine; having the space to decorate is a large part of the fun of this summer rental.
And, as I hope everyone in this scenario is aware, under the law, a landlord can't simply show up unannounced, or come into a tenant's house without authorization, invitation, or notice. In fact, in many states or cities (including Chicago), even with 2-day notice there must be an appropriate reason, such as showing the house to prospective tenants when the lease is ending.
Breaking and entering, with or without a key, whether to steal, or to shout, insult, and cry, is not legal and not ok. Trespassing, even on property you own, is not legal and is not ok. And creeper-ism, oh my goodness: no. How would this individual feel if someone were behaving toward his daughters or granddaughters (I'm told there is even a baby great-granddaughter) the way he has been behaving toward me? Where's the empathy? Has dementia blotted it out?
Similarly, if you rent a hotel room, hotel staff are not supposed to come in unannounced at any time of any day or night, even though you don't own the hotel room, and even though they have a key.
You paid for it, whether it is a hotel room or rental house, and it comes with an expectation of privacy, security, and quiet enjoyment.
A landlord has right of ownership, but a tenant has rights of possession and privacy.
And a human -- including a tenant! -- is to be treated with empathy and equality; with respect.
So, what practical security steps to take next?
Breached door: before
In the security assessment that I undertook and that you can also read about in the previous post, I noticed something interesting and important that I hadn't before: the interior door to the kitchen from the basement had no lock.
Even if I had noticed this before, I wouldn't necessarily have thought anything of it. But now I was thinking a lot of it.
What appeared to be the bracket of a latch, or some other security hardware, was on the lock-less door, but the latch itself or any sort of security mechanism was not there.
That's how the owner got in: he used his key to open the outside basement entrance, and walked into the kitchen through the lock-less door at the top of the basement stairs.
He had first tried to come in through the front door, as I later realized when replaying the afternoon's events in my head. I had heard some noises while on my client call including slamming sounds; these noises were made by the landlord unlocking the front door and not being able to get in because I had the chain on the door, and then slamming the door shut again.
Insane, right?
The front door seemed secure, at least!
But the house has 3 more doors from the outside, counting the interior kitchen door from the basement, and I needed to secure these.
I bought door hardware at the local hardware store, including a chain for the lock-less door since a chain had worked on the front door. The store owner recommended a chain too -- and also asked why the landlord was living alone with dementia? Good question, but one that I don't think his family is ready to address?
I also bought latches for the other 2 doors.
My excellent handyman Johnny, whom I found through TaskRabbit and who has been extremely professional to work with on a few projects for the cottage, came over to install the door hardware, and pointed out something I hadn't realized: chains evidently are for doors that open into a room, not out from the room. The lock-less door opens out from the kitchen to the stairs going down to the basement.
(I do not use the basement, by the way, because the landlord keeps many items stored there in a disorganized fashion, including mildew it seems, and it wouldn't be a good environment for Jorji the cat either.)
Johnny also mentioned that latches work best when the door and jamb are flush with each other, unless we drill a hole in the jamb for the latch bolt to slide into.
As someone who has lived in apartments or condos for most of my adult life, I have suddenly been learning a great deal about basic security for a house, about what to look for when assessing vulnerabilities, and about door hardware, as you can see! (More in previous post.)
Additional doors: after
After Johnny and I sorted this all out, he installed the chain onto the kitchen door from the covered back patio area that I don't use because the landlord has paint and tools stored there (and ants, it seems).
He put one of the latches onto the side door which opens onto the side porch that I also don't use because it is rotten and filthy. (So was the front porch, but I needed that one so washed and scrubbed it.)
Then Johnny took the remaining latch back to the hardware store to exchange it for a latch-lock-key configuration. He returned, installed it, and only I have the keys.
That's right: the keys to the new lock on the door that the landlord breached belong to me only.
Breached door: after
I am keeping that door locked at all times.
I'd already kept the other doors locked at all times, but now the ones that had one lock have two, and the one that had no lock -- and that I hadn't even noticed was a vulnerability -- has a private lock!
What else is next?
Peace of mind, and peace in the physical realm
The goal is unchanged: serenity.
The process and the practice are unchanged: serenity.
Is serenity dependent on security? Or does it come from within? From Source?
Or is it important to have physical security to go with our Source serenity?
Serenity does not mean passivity. My serenity can be fierce.
I rented this house so that I could take time to contemplate, meditate, create, rejuvenate, and decorate -- in the style of the Great Lakes! I rented it to make it my summer serenity cottage, and to honor Lake Michigan and our beautiful Great Lakes region.
I felt from the moment I walked in that the house chose me too, so that it could experience this phase of existence!
Decorating is about dreaming reality into being. Very Golden Age!
There have been some unexpected challenges in this summer project for sure, documented in this blog along with happy moments and decorating adventures.
Have you seen some of the spaces I've decorated within what was a blank-space house, a "fixer" of a house built in 1906?
For example:
Rooms I haven't posted about yet include:
- Dining Room
- Guest Bedroom
- Kitchen (or we could call the kitchen the "Scene of the Crime," thinking of the incident!)
- Walk-In Closet that I created out of a spare upstairs room!
I'm due to stay here at the cottage through the end of August, while my regular place is in the midst of intolerable roof noise and vibration which make sleep and quiet enjoyment impossible. My regular place is in month 21 of bad roof work (almost 2 years of trauma) and I am at the cottage to soothe my nerves, not have them jangled more.
My movers are scheduled to come on August 26, six weeks from now. (The mid-point is now! We are halfway through summer!)
If I can stay here for these remaining six weeks with peace of mind, and can dream in peace, I will.
So will sweet Jorji the cat.
Onward and upward!
Your friend in decorating,
Valerie
Feel free to say hi via email as well: valerie.beck@post.harvard.edu.
Thank you!
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