Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily activities.

In his journal entry for April 6, 1959, Indiana records receiving a letter from art historian Richard Carrott and a phone call from art historian and curator Robert Rosenbaum. The latter informed him that he intended to come down to Coenties Slip that weekend to visit him and Ellsworth Kelly. Indiana then writes that he showed Agnes Martin a photograph of his work, feeling that he could "after she showed me those of her and Betty Parsons, looking very much like sisters or companions of the soul at least, and although she had seen the panel itself, she was very alarmed by the 'Sixth State' and I was cautioned not to show any of the sphere paintings to Betty Parsons."

He goes on to note that his cats (who did not get along) put working out of the question, but that he was "pretty much preoccupied otherwise anyway."

He records that a friend named Dick came over to his loft in time to go out to dinner, and that while they were at the cafeteria Kelly and came in with a new friend, Victor Dido. Indiana writes that he dropped in on them later, and that "what I once wanted myself is coming to pass. EK [Ellsworth Kelly] hints that they will share the third floor, Brody's old office. Dido is quite, gentle, soft, retiring—qualities, if I had had in greater bounty, that could have touched the scales."

He then notes that "for some perverse reason" he knocked on Martin's door, and that while she was reluctant to see him, once started she talked for thirty minutes, "mostly about her horses and their way of testing cowardly people."