I have a hard time visualizing things when I'm fully awake. Ask me to picture my wife or my kids' faces, and I can't do it. I feel I can subconsiously visualiz

I have a hard time visualizing things when I'm fully awake. Ask me to picture my wife or my kids' faces, and I can't do it. I feel I can subconsiously visualize them with no problem, but as soon as a try to consciously do it, the picture disolves. Same with any fully awake visualization - can't quite see the image in my head - it's like it's in my peripheral vision but scoots away as soon as I look. But I can lucid dream, and do things like complex 3D mechanism design while lucid dreaming (that I can later turn concrete using CAD). Anyway, I have no problem with navigation - I can look at a map, and navigate from the (non visualizable!) memory for ages (an hour if hiking, maybe several hours if driving), and pretty much always tell you where north is. But I still cannot bring the image of the map back into my conscious mind. The brain is a very weird thing indeed.