Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Convergence
Chapter 29 -- The Underground River as Metaphor
What history has shown is that eventually these UNDERGROUND STREAMS do alter the
balance of power of the world. -- Philip Gardiner, Secret Societies, Gardiner's Forbidden
Knowledge (2007)
Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little
streams of accident and willfulness have their correction in the vast UNDERGROUND RIVER
which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected! -- Tom Stoppard, The
Coast of Utopia (2002)
The SUBTERRANEAN RIVER of blood story is
about the bodies of the participants collectively
joining the flows of their life forces, their blood, to
create a fluidity which dissolves all borders (between
their individual bodies and the sacred ground, the
ground made sacred).
The exfoliation is almost absolute, but it retains these features: vitality, movement,
transformation (the bodies return to normal when they re-emerge). -- Stephen Muecke,
"Travelling the SUBTERRANEAN RIVER of Blood: Philosophy and Magic in Cultural Studies,"
Cultural Studies 13:1, 1999
Creativity
Forget writing, it’s a trivial matter. But day in day out, when the inarticulate patient struggles to
lay himself bare for you, or with nothing more than a boil on his back is so caught off balance
that he reveals some secret twist of a whole community’s pathetic way of thought, a man is
suddenly seized again with a desire to speak of the UNDERGROUND STREAM which for a
moment has come up just under the surface. It is just a glimpse, an intimation of all that which
the daily print misses or deliberately hides, but the excitement is intense and the rush to write is
on again -- William Carlos Williams, The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951)
What he is trying to do is jump-start a poem by lowering a bucket down into a kind of
UNDERGROUND STREAM flowing through his mind -- a stream of continuously flowing poetry,
or perhaps poetic stuff would be a better way to put it. Whatever the bucket brings up will be
his poem. -- Larissa MacFarquhar on John Ashbery in “Present Waking Life,” New Yorker,
November 7, 2005
The UNDERGROUND RIVER of creation curves on beneath the surface life, its inspiring
waters ever available to refresh and bring sparkle to daily life. People who feel that they are
uncreative often complain that they do not know how to get access to these waters. Surely,
these people assert, creative waters run through particularly gifted people only. -- "The
Underground River of Creation Revisited," Beth Owl's Daughter, internet posting, March 2010
Culture
Cultures flow through our lives like UNDERGROUND RIVERS, powerfully nurturing, potently
influencing, and sometimes dividing -- Michelle LeBaron, Bridging Cultural Conflicts (2003)
How bright, in comparison, the conception of our personality, meandering like an
UNDERGROUND RIVER through the hidden world of God's creation, and enabling us, at each
stage, to partake of Humanity's victories. -- Laurence Gronlund, Our Destiny, The Influence of
Socialism on Morals and Religion (1891)
Culture is the UNDERGROUND STREAM of norms, values, beliefs, traditions, and rituals that
builds up over time as people work together, solve problems, and confront challenges .This set
of informal expectations and values shapes how people think, feel, and act in schools. -- T.E.
Deal and K.D. Peterson, "How Leaders Influence the Culture of Schools," Educational
Leadership, September 1998
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