The word came to us from British Celtic word kombrogos, and before that, from the Celtic word Kom- a collective prefix. The word, originally, meant fellow countryman. We gave more pedestrian meanings to the word. It is immediately associated to bars. The bar counter is the most popular confession booth or psychoanalyst divan there is. It is also a living room couch, meeting table, corner of life, captive chair, observation post, podium, playing board, buffet and, when the hours are small, the streets dawn and the birds begin to cough outside, a pillow.
Many good ideas, many plans, great friendships and beautiful fights began and ended having a counter as a witness. If we could register what it is said on bar counters maybe we could produce a first class sociological study about ourselves.
But the most important is the life that passes by them, by our counters: true loves and loves of occasion, small lies and great truths, the silences and the noise, dreams and, sometimes, hard awakenings.
It is a place of exchange, of give and take, of barter, mutual and simultaneous transference of affection, stories and life.
