WHEN WORDS MEET WATER
- Celia Louise
- Jan 28
- 4 min read
For a while now, I’ve been speaking words to water
and watching what happens when it freezes.
The images feel playful and wise at the same time,
like water saying
Oh, you noticed me. Let me show you something.
Years ago, I encountered the work of Masaru Emoto and his photographs of frozen water crystals shaped by words, music, and intention. I understood them as a suggestion that how we speak, to each other, to ourselves, to the world, might matter more than we realize.
We grew up with the rhyme sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me, yet life keeps teaching us otherwise.
Words shape the human heart.
And the heart is complex and tender, at its best when it is honoured rather than handled carelessly.
That curiosity about words and their effect eventually spilled into my fictional writing of
The Word Shoppe series, a place I wish were real.
I wrote the book I want to live in.
It’s where I played with words slowly, letting them reveal what they really wanted to share.
The writing has been deeply comforting.
I consulted my father’s old Oxford English Dictionary.
I consulted Clear Lake.
And I consulted Lila and her Grandmother, the two central characters, who take experiences from my life and play with them in fiction.
As I gathered my favourite list of words into The Word Shoppe,
it felt natural to bring water into the conversation.
I speak a word. I offer it to the water. I freeze it. And then I wait.
What happens next is never predictable.
Each image feels like a collaboration, not me telling water what to do, but water showing me what it heard. Water responding in its own language, forming shapes that feel like art and conversation, words made visible.
When the word Spark met water, the water responded
with what looked like a tiny, mischievous spark,
wild hair, arms open to possibility, a grin that made me laugh out loud. I recognized that feeling immediately, that familiar inner spark of creativity, made visible.
When the word Awaken met water, I was surprised. Twelve times in a row, an eye appeared. Sometimes with an eyebrow, sometimes unmistakably a third eye. I hadn’t used the term third eye anywhere in my writing, yet awakening has always felt connected to that way of seeing.
When the word Beloved met water, a heart formed. And those who know my fondness for hearts will know that this brought tears to my eyes. I read this quote to the water before I froze it:
Beloved
You are beloved, always chosen, always held by the heart of the universe, for being you.
To know this is to live as love itself, shining as the universe’s endless song.
Water reminds me that I am part of a much larger conversation than my own thoughts.
This kind of curiosity, I’m learning, is a devotion I have to life. When followed, it often leads somewhere unexpectedly beautiful.
The Word Shoppe book will be making its way into the world soon.
Until then, if you’re curious, these water images and quotes are now gathered into a small book on Amazon, When Words Meet Water. This little book grew from curiosity: about words, about water, about being human. It isn’t offered as a conclusion, but as something playful to explore with yourself, with your family, with friends.
Words, like water, can change us if we pay attention.
Perhaps water feels so familiar to us because it is our first home. We spend our earliest months floating in it, held and nourished by it, before we ever learn its name.
What keeps delighting me is how water refuses to be just one thing. It can be ice, liquid, or steam, changing form without ever losing its essence. It adapts to temperature and environment so effortlessly that we forget how extraordinary that is. Water doesn’t cling to a single identity. It embraces all of its magic equally, as we should with ourselves.
Water has always felt like a companion in my life.
Water as nourishment: tea steeping, friends gathered close, and tears that arrive without asking. I’ve learned not to hurry these moments. Water knows how to carry grief without explanation, the body cleansing what the mind cannot. And it carries joy too, tears of laughter, of recognition, of being deeply moved by love or beauty.
Water holds it all.
There were years when I wanted more from life, and the ocean called.
I moved to Sidney, British Columbia, Canada for saltwater air, wide horizons, and tides that all reminded me that there is more life than what you can see. Yet I kept “Running Back to Saskatoon,” to quote The Guess Who.
Four grandchildren have stolen my heart here, and that is the best feeling in the world. Here, water has taken the shape of stillness. Ice. Frost. Pausing. Of course, it is winter in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan as I write this.
Watching water freeze taught me something I didn’t know I needed to learn:
that water has something to share with us,
and that it matters,
because we are made of so much of it.
By Celia Louise . January 2026