  Characteristics of a Hamilton-Jacobi equation can be seen as action
minimizing trajectories of fluid particles. For nonsmooth "viscosity"
solutions, which give rise to discontinuous velocity fields, this description
is usually pursued only up to the moment when trajectories hit a shock and
cease to minimize the Lagrangian action. In this paper we show that for any
convex Hamiltonian there exists a uniquely defined canonical global nonsmooth
coalescing flow that extends particle trajectories and determines dynamics
inside the shocks. We also provide a variational description of the
corresponding effective velocity field inside shocks, and discuss relation to
the "dissipative anomaly" in the limit of vanishing viscosity.
