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 life on Coenties Slip.

In his journal entry for August 6, 1961, Indiana records that a cloudy morning had turned into a beautiful afternoon, and that after a fried chicken lunch at the D/H (the Seamen's Church Institute, often referred to as the Doghouse) he spent a few minutes on the end of the pier. He then notes working on three pieces, writing "give yellow [to] Irresurrection (Hardrock), and begin The Geography of Memory and Unfeathered Biped."

Indiana often discusses current events in his journals, and in this entry he records that the Russians had sent their second astronaut (Gherman Stepanovich Titov) into orbit, "purportedly [to] stay up [to] 24 hours in orbit, making something like 17 passes around the world: [the] first man [to] see more than one sunrise and sunset in one day in the history of mankind."