  We study a singular parabolic equation of the total variation type in one
dimension. The problem is a simplification of the singular curvature flow. We
show existence and uniqueness of weak solutions. We also prove existence of
weak solutions to the semi-discretization of the problem as well as convergence
of the approximating sequences. The semi-discretization shows that facets must
form. For a class of initial data we are able to study in details the facet
formation and interactions and their asymptotic behavior. We notice that our
qualitative results may be interpreted with the help of a special composition
of multivalued operators.
