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.

This journal page covers January 11–12, 1961. Indiana's entry for January 11, 1961, includes a sketch of Agadir (an early stage of The American Dream, I), with the note "very apt to become the American Way (Lenore's stencil)." (Indiana had found a cache of nineteenth-century brass stencils in Lenore Tawney's studio, which sparked his interest in the stenciled letter and use of words in a circular format). He also writes "yin and yang considered in four different aspects but rejected in turn." 

Indiana returned to working on Agadir on January 12, 1961, recording in his journal entry "this once green and white painting was [the] object of most of my thoughts these two days, since it is long overdue for transmutation."