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 page for January 23, 1962, Indiana details helping J. (his partner, fashion designer John Kloss) fix his sink's drainage issues, and then a visit by Rolf Nelson. Nelson, who had been working at the Martha Jackson Gallery and would move to Los Angeles later that year, first working at Dilexi Gallery and then opening his own gallery, spoke of "pressing his gallery situation . . . in ambiguities, generalities, still couched slightly in [the] mysterious." Indiana writes that Nelson saw the second Eat (The Green Diamond Eat) and "apparently liked what he saw."

Indiana records receiving two phone calls, one from Bob Wilson about an incorrectly addressed card advising him to see The American Dream, I at the Museum of Modern Art, "clearing up a mystery which I did not even know was a mystery," and another from Ruth Kaufmann, who wanted to show his work in Larchmont. This led Indiana to call Robert Natkin, as he would "prefer showing with him [to] Robert Andrew Parker whom she had mentioned." He notes that they "ranged over wide subjects and possibly rekindled [their] friendship" during the hour and twenty minute phone call. Indiana / Natkin, organized by Kaufmann, opened at the Stubbing and Greenfield Gallery two months later, on March 24.

Indiana also records completing an Eat drawing late that evening.