being unable to visualise

I am one of those people you may have read about who does not have a "mind's eye" - or at least I have a very poor one.  If I read a book that says someone is wearing a green jacket, I understand what that means, what a green jacket is - but I don't see a picture of someone in a green jacket somewhere inside my head.

I'm not as far along this spectrum as some, as I can (with a bit of effort) conjure up mental images of things I see commonly - like an apple, for example - as well as places that I spend a lot of time in.  But only if I have registered information about it.  For example trying to visualise my desk at work, I can 'see' the pile of old magazines that I rest my laptop on to get it at the right height to work with, but I cannot 'see' the desktop itself - and realise as I try to that I have never registered its colour.  I suppose that means it must be something neutral like white, beige or grey, otherwise I probably would have noticed.  I can't visualise people either, although I might recall the colour of their hair and eyes, if I have registered that.  Images that I can bring to mind (like the apple) are fleeting and faint.  I cannot hear sounds or smell odours in my head either, which I believe some people can.

It's hard to imagine what life is like for people who are at the other end of this spectrum - who apparently read a book and experience it almost as a film in their head.  I'm not sure whether it is something they can turn off?  Must be terribly distracting if not, when someone is trying to have a regular conversation with you and you get vivid images in your mind whilst they're speaking.

It would explain why I find long descriptive passages in books so boring, why I am totally unable to draw anything given a blank piece of paper - whilst at the same time being reasonably good at copying a picture from a photograph - and my total confusion at school when they told us to set out factual information with circles, arrows and so on across the page to help us remember it for the exams.  I had no idea that others might be able to visualise that diagram in their head!

Thinking about my time in Madagascar, however, I see one advantage for those who think like me.  We had a very near miss when driving along a road that went around the side of a small mountain, our small (12-seater) bus was suddenly faced by another small bus coming round the bend, on the wrong side of the road, at very great speed.  Braking would have merely meant a head-on collision, so the other vehicle had the choice of swerving left or right.  If he'd gone to his right, he'd almost certainly have plunged off the road and down the side of the mountain, so he swerved left, somehow (I'll never know how) managing to avoid even clipping the corner of our vehicle, but it meant that he smashed pretty hard into the rock face on that side of the road.  He bounced off and along a bit further (closely beside us to our right), then went into a small ditch and again into the rock face.  The driver must certainly have been killed and many of the passengers and the vehicle badly damaged.

Our local guide phoned for emergency medical people but we did not stop, apparently that is not advisable in such circumstances.  My reaction was, "Wow!  That was close!  Hope the people are okay.  Now, what were you saying about plans for this afternoon?"  & life went on.  Byt the end of the day I'd forgotten about it until the subject was raised over dinner.  At which point I found out that some of the others had been quite traumatised by it - our guide said that when we arrived at our destination and he got to his room he started shaing like a leaf.  Now I accept that the experience must have been a lot worse for him given that he was in the front seat - but I have realised that my lack of ability to visualise things serves to protect me in such situations.  I will never imagine what could have happened, other than in purely theoretical terms, and I will never have flashbacks of anything.

It makes me wonder whether this contributes to what others sometimes see as bravery in me.  Which I've always known was not bravery at all, but couldn't explain to people why it was not.  Now that I think about it - if someone asks "What if you were kidnapped by Al Qaida?", I might try to think in a practical way what that might mean, and then I might go off into a daydream about how I might manage to build some empathy with my kidnappers, get them to teach me Arabic, and so on - but I would not (and could not) visualise a scary-looking figure standing over me with a gun, so the thought of being kidnapped doesn't fill me with fear.  Not that it's likely to happen anyway (just so my Mum doesn't read too much into that example!!), but nevertheless I'm happy to be free from such mental images!